Stopping the Cycle
by savvyliterate
Summary: Everything in Lorelai's life was spinning out of control so fast while she stood absolutely still in the center, paralyzed. All her life, she had known what she wanted, and now she wasn't sure of anything except this one cold, hard fact – she wasn't about to let her and Luke do this to each other again. (LL, AYITL AU)
1. Chapter 1

_Author's note: Happy birthday to Meags09! This fic is entirely for her for her birthday, which is today! I hope to have the second part posted either later today or tomorrow, but I couldn't wait. Much thanks to JumpingCattleHockey for her encouragement._

 _This takes place during "Spring," but reorders the conversation that Lorelai and Rory have about the lucky outfit for reasons you will read below. Any recognizable dialogue comes from "A Year in the Life." And my apologies to New York lovers, but I'm having the Met stay open until 9 on a weekday night that isn't a Friday so the timelines work out._

* * *

"Well, you don't come to shop, you came to hang out with me." Rory huffed at the line of people waiting for limited-edition toys. "I wouldn't be in this position if I'd had my lucky outfit."

"What's your lucky outfit?" Lorelai asked absently, glancing at the shop a couple doors down. Surely Rory had to be out of it not to notice that it was the Strand, one of her favorite places on the planet.

"Red dress, full skirt," Rory replied, scribbling something on a notepad.

Lorelai whipped her head around to gawk at her. "That's in my closet!"

Rory's jaw dropped. "Are you kidding me?"

"No! It looks cute with boots!"

Rory stared at her in shock for a full minute before wildly gesticulating. "Mom, you knew I was looking for that outfit!"

Lorelai frowned at her. "Really? That red? It'll wash you out."

"Great so not only did you steal my lucky outfit, you've now ruined the image I had of me in my outfit. Thanks a lot."

Rory stomped away, and Lorelai stared after her, guilt twisting her stomach. There was something wrong with her daughter. Hell, there was something wrong with everyone in her life lately, it seemed. It felt like since the start of the year, or really since her father died, things had been changing in ways that weren't comfortable for anyone. Now Rory was behaving strangely, her mother had stopped therapy, and even Luke was acting like something had crawled up his butt and died. Michel wanted to leave, and she hadn't heard from Sookie since Christmas. She hadn't had a day off in months until this trip, and she couldn't remember the last time she had sex. January? February? Had there still be snow on the ground?

Lorelai longed to press her head to the nearest post. Instead, she walked back to Rory. After pleading a severe case of foot soreness (and she wasn't entirely wrong), Rory let her off the hook and she headed back to the hotel. It was only noon. She did the mental calculations. Rory had her interview the next morning, so there was nearly 24 hours to pull it off and she only needed a few of them.

Lorelai rounded the corner and pulled out her cell phone. She flagged down a taxi as she pulled up a familiar number.

* * *

She lay on her bed at the hotel paging through her phone, absently kicking her feet in the air. An abandoned tray of room service sat nearby, crumbs and a random stalk of celery the remains of a very good lunch. Only Luke could sneak celery into her food, and he even knew to make sure it was well-cooked and disguised with other stuff so it wouldn't taste or smell anything like celery.

Lorelai eyed the tray and nudged it a bit farther away.

She turned her head toward the door when a series of loud poundings sounded. Speak of the devil …

Lorelai opened the door and had a garment bag shoved in her face. "Here. Red dress with, and I quote, 'swooshy skirt,'" Luke groused. "And I am never saying the word 'swooshy' again."

"Thanks, babe." She kissed his cheek, grabbed his arm, and pulled him inside. She peeked inside and verified that it was the correct outfit. "Come in, stay awhile. Kick your shoes off. Don't need to rush in and out."

He hovered in the short hallway that linked the main part of the room to the door. "There's no rushing in and out of anything in this city if you're in a car. Have you seen that traffic out there? I hate this place. What's with the dress anyhow?"

Lorelai folded the garment bag over her arm, then closed and secured the latch on the door. "Rory says it's her lucky outfit. It gives her confidence."

"Really? That red? It washes her out."

"Exactly what I said!"

Luke let her lead him into the suite and gave her a knowing look after spotting the abandoned celery.

"If you want it, it's yours. But I'm not touching it," Lorelai proclaimed.

"I'm surprised you let it within a 6-foot radius."

"It was a moment of weakness."

She hung the dress up in the closet as Luke wandered to the window and twitched the curtains aside. "Nice view," he admitted. "Condé Nast is paying for this?"

"Nope. The Lorelai Gilmore trust fund for wayward daughters. Oh, after this, we might no longer be able to keep Paul Anka in the lifestyle to which he has become accustomed."

"I'm sure he can manage." She smirked at him, and he rolled his eyes. "Fine, he can't, but you've done nothing but work recently. I think you can afford a night in a fancy hotel. You need a break."

"Pot, kettle." Lorelai crawled onto her bed and patted the empty space next to her. "Shoes off. Come join me."

Luke complied, sitting on the edge of the bed to unlace and remove his work boots before moving the lunch tray over to a round table in the corner. "Isn't Rory due back?"

"Not for awhile."

He settled himself next to her on the bed. "You called me three hours ago."

"She texted me and said she was going to check out some other leads. She's doing this on spec."

"They're not paying her?"

"She says she wants to show them her stuff."

Luke scowled at her. "How could they not know what her stuff's like? She's in the _New Yorker_! Want me to send them a menu?"

Lorelai patted his leg. "That's sweet, babe, but I think they can manage without it."

"I'm serious! It's Rory! Don't they know what they've got in her? Putzes, all of them."

Despite the strain between them, Lorelai's heart dissolved into a mushy pile of goo. She always associated the feeling with watching Sookie make caramel, the real stuff that was warm and not-too-sticky sweet. It was rich, golden, and swamped her with feeling. She smiled at Luke, trying to remember if at some point over the past decade or so if she confessed that part of the reason she fell for him in the first place was how very much he loved her daughter.

She laid her head on his shoulder, and he shifted to wrap an arm around her, tucking her into the crook. She almost reached for the remote to turn the TV on and find something inane for them both to mock. But it seemed like a waste of a perfectly good hotel room and a conveniently absent daughter that wouldn't be around for hours yet, knowing her. She tilted her head to look up at him, halfway expecting find him dozing. Instead, he was staring at the TV, his eyes troubled.

She absently traced circles over his stomach until he looked down at her, and he seemed to be on the verge of asking her something. She very nearly asked him what he was thinking about, but instead she stretched up to kiss him. She kissed him until his eyes fluttered shut, and she could no longer see the look that unsettled her. She kept her lips on his as she shifted, straddling his thighs.

"What're you doing?" Luke whispered.

"What does it look like I'm doing?" Lorelai leaned down to lave her tongue over the pulse in his neck, just above the collar of the T-shirt he wore beneath the plaid.

"Rory could walk in at any moment." His hands dropped to her hips, and he wasn't pushing her away, so she took it as a sign to continue.

"She'll be gone for hours." She trailed her lips up the side of his neck and over the stubble on his jaw before pulling back to start working on her shirt. "When was the last time we did this?"

"What?"

Good-bye shirt. It landed in the vicinity of Rory's bed, and Lorelai found herself looking down at the basic cotton bra she wore. She had showered when she gotten back to the hotel, but none of the lingerie she brought was geared toward mid-afternoon romp in lower Manhattan. "Was there snow on the ground or not?"

"I don't keep track of those things." Luke absently trailed his fingers up and down her ribcage, his eyes focused at some point on her stomach. She found herself looking as well, wondering if he saw something new there. But, no, just relatively smooth skin.

The next logical step would be to divest her bra, reach for his shirts, and move into something so well-practiced, so comforting, that it should require no thought at all. That's what sex was nine years into a relationship. Well, 11 really if you counted the first go-around. You knew exactly what you were getting, but there was a certain level of excitement in the familiar. They knew exactly how to touch each other, knew which vulnerabilities to exploit to drive the other crazy. He was the closest she'd ever been to anyone, even Rory.

Which meant she knew when something was off.

"Do you remember the last time we had sex?" Lorelai asked again.

His thumbs traced circles over her hip bones. Beneath her, there was no tell-tale ridge in his jeans. "I … uh … no."

"Neither do I." And the thought terrified her to the core.

"I don't think it's been that long," Luke insisted.

"Do you remember the last time we went weeks without touching each other?"

"We touch each other all the time." He ran his hands up and down her sides to prove his point. "I kissed you when you left this morning. You hugged me, then hugged your coffee cup."

"Not like that. I mean like _that_. You know, naked mattress mambo."

He groaned. "You promised me you'd never refer to sex as that again."

"Ten years," Lorelai continued. "I was looking at the calendar on my phone when you got here. It's nearly 10 years since …"

She saw the moment Luke remembered, when his brain flashed back to the worst year of their lives for both of them. Nothing had ever topped the spectacular hell they had put each other through. The entire year apart had been like walking barefoot over knives in hot coal. Nothing she'd done, even married someone else, had erased the pain. "It's not like that."

"Is it? Then why are we failing at sex?" She scooted back and put a hand right on his crotch. Her hands measured the length of him, half-hard. "We're good at sex. We're gold medalists at sex. I'm 48, I'm not dead below the belt."

"Your birthday," Luke managed, because there was something to be said for direct stimulation, even though denim.

"What?"

"We had sex on your birthday." He shrugged. "You mentioned your age, so I remembered it."

Lorelai caught her bottom lip between her teeth. "Oh. OK. There wasn't snow on the ground then. I don't think."

"It was two weeks ago," he pointed out.

"It used to be that we couldn't go for two days without leaping each other."

Because she had scooted back out of reach, he settled for tracing patterns on her calves. "Look, just because it's been a couple of weeks …"

"But what about before then?"

"Lorelai."

"Was it January? I'm sure it had to be January. Maybe February? I'm pretty sure there was still snow on the ground."

"Lorelai!"

She scrambled off him, unable to keep still. She started pacing the length of the room, wrapping her arms around herself. "There's wrong. There's something wrong. I can feel it. It's like my gut is a Magic 8 ball and when I ask it how we're doing, it keeps fluctuating between 'Reply hazy try again' and 'Better not tell you now.'"

Luke swung his legs over the side of the bed, breathing hard for a few seconds. Lorelai wasn't sure if it was because of arousal or annoyance. "Look, it just happens. We didn't do anything when you spent that week in Las Vegas for that conference of yours a few years ago."

She whipped around. "And we were practically all over each other the moment I stepped off the plane. This is different. It _is_. You're here, you're doing all the motions, but you're not here. Why won't you tell me what's wrong?"

"Why didn't you tell me you stopped going to therapy with your mother and started going by yourself?" The words burst out of him so fast and in such a rush that she wondered exactly how long he had been holding them back.

Lorelai flinched. "How did you find that out?"

"Your mother told me when we went out looking at real estate together."

Well, _that_ revelation was a kick in the teeth. "You what? What the hell, Luke, why didn't you tell me that?" Lorelai wasn't quite sure what to do with herself, how to even take that information. "We're supposed to be partners. Why aren't we telling each other this stuff?"

He got to his feet. "How the hell would I know? You set it up."

"What?"

Luke started to pace the room himself, which completely defeated the purpose of her pacing the room, because there simply wasn't enough room for both of them to walk circles around each other. "Yeah. Our lives were set up by you. I just went along with it. You set it up, and I went along, and that's how it works. Now we're in the middle of this fancy hotel in New York, arguing about the last time we had sex!"

He spun to face her, and Lorelai's mind immediately flashed back 10 years to the ultimatum. They had stood somewhat like this, she remembered, just a couple feet apart. Both of them angry and confused and not quite understanding each other. It wasn't like that, she reminded herself. _It wasn_ _'_ _t_. There hadn't been months of lies and emotional manipulation between them at that point – of her holding back her true feelings and him skirting all their problems just to have everything in neat little boxes. It had been one lie each between them. On the grand scheme of things, it ranked on the low end of the whopper scale.

But one thing usually led to another and to another. Everything in her life was changing and spinning out of control so fast while she stood absolutely still in the center, paralyzed. All of her life, she had known what she wanted, and now she wasn't sure of anything except this one cold, hard fact – she wasn't about to let her and Luke do this to each other again. The cycle stopped now. She was going to take the reins in one area of her life, and maybe through this, she could start finding more of the answers.

"Do you have any clothes with you?"

He simply blinked, surprised by the abrupt change of topic. "What? No, just the ones I have on."

"Right, I'll take care of it." Lorelai moved to the in-room phone, picking it up and hitting a button. "Hello, yes, front desk."

"Lorelai, what are you …"

She waved him off. "Hi, yes, do you have any available rooms for tonight? You do? Great. I need a second room, please. Charge it to the same card on file as this one. Make it two nights. Single bed, king-sized? Perfect. You'll have the keys sent up? Thank you." She hung up the phone and didn't look at him. "Call Cesar."

"Lorelai, what are you doing?"

She took several measured breaths before turning to face him. "It's never or now. You and I. We're not leaving New York until we fix this, until we figure out why we started lying to each other." Another deep breath, and tears stung in the back of her eyes. "I'm not letting this happen to us again."

Luke stared at her for several seconds, pulled out his cell phone, and made the call.

* * *

"I can hear your stomach."

"I really haven't eaten since this morning."

As soon as Luke had made arrangements with Cesar to take over the diner for the next couple of days, they fled the hotel. The space seemed too small for everything that hung between them, and Lorelai needed coffee in the worst way. They were barely a block away from the hotel before Luke's stomach decided to assert its own demands.

"I offered you that celery."

"And I ate it."

"I offered you a cro-dough-cake."

Luke made a face like she'd offered him pig slop rather than a delectable pastry. "Those things are disgusting."

"Disgusting, but worth $102 a pop on the grey market." Lorelai waved her phone at him.

"Really?"

"Or is it black market? I'm not sure."

Luke pointed at her phone, where she had a picture displayed of the pastry box she had acquired that morning. "$102 for those things?"

"I looked it up on Craigslist."

"It was congealing even as we left!"

"I've got a text out to this guy in SoHo who's offering me $95, but I bet I can drive him up."

"Unbelievable." Luke rolled his eyes, shifting his focus to one of the nearby store windows. "Look, let's go in here. There's food I recognize, and there's coffee."

"Bless you." With a dazzling smile, Lorelai pushed into the small café. There was indeed coffee, along with assorted deli foods, and soon enough they were seated at a small table with an array of food around them.

Lorelai waited until he had eaten half of his turkey sandwich before selecting the first area of discussion. She considered it a remarkable feat of patience, but she had also been distracted by a couple of triple chocolate chip cookies. "So … my mom."

"She showed up at the diner on the day you had a therapy session and dragged me out." Luke shrugged and pulled the small cup of tomato soup he had ordered with the sandwich over. "What was I going to do?"

Lorelai made theatrical gestures with one hand while consuming a cookie with the other. "Tell her no! Slam the door in her face! You're good at it!"

He took a bite of soup, then put the spoon down next to the cup. "Look, you two were trying with the therapy thing, and I didn't want to mess that up by causing a scene. It was just easier to go along with it. I was going to tell you, but then your mom told me you stopped therapy, and then you lied to me. Why did you lie to me?"

"… I don't know."

"That's not a good answer, Lorelai." Luke tore his gaze away from her, lifted the other half of his sandwich as if he was going to eat it, then dropped it back on the wrapper.

Her stomach pitched, and suddenly that second cookie didn't seem like a good idea at all. "It's 'I don't know' because _I don't know_. I didn't drive home purposefully plotting to lie to you. You asked, I opened my mouth, and it popped out. There was a chance of anything popping out at that point. And then I just didn't say anything because it was just easier not to say anything, and you stopped asking, so I didn't have to lie again."

"But were you going to lie to me again about it?" Luke kept his focus on the sandwich, and the avoidance was ripping her heart into tiny shreds.

"… I don't know. It's the truth, OK? I don't know." Lorelai reached over and laid a hand on his, absently stroking the rough skin. He needed lotion. She had about six tubes in her purse, all guaranteed to offend his sensibilities in various ways. "What would you have said if I asked you if you'd been out with my mother?"

Luke didn't say anything for several terrifying seconds. "I don't know," he admitted.

"See? You don't have all the answers either." She squeezed his hand and let go.

Once their meal was finished, they decided to pick a place to visit. It was nearly summer, and they were assured of several more hours of daylight, but they still needed to pick something that wasn't going to close the second they got there. There were a few immediate vetoes. Musicals were out, and Luke refused to step foot in the Empire State Building.

"So … how about the Metropolitan Museum of Art?" Lorelai had a map of Central Park open on her phone, showing two large museums on opposite sides of the park.

"The Museum of Natural History's always looked interesting." Luke tapped on the left side, zooming in on it.

Lorelai brought up the information. "And it closes at 5:45, which means we'd have to magically teleport ourselves there and do a speed run to see anything."

"And the other one?"

Lorelai switched over to the other museum. "The Met closes at 9."

"OK, we'll go to the Met."

She centered the map back on their current location. "There's also the 9/11 memorial and museum, and we're closer to it. That's also open until 9."

"Nah, the Met's good." Luke shrugged and toyed with the bottle of lotion that she handed him. It was a vanilla sandalwood scent, and surprisingly, he hadn't balked. He dropped back it in her purse and rubbed his hands together. "I dunno, it feels strange to me, to go see all that stuff. It was bad enough when it happened, you know? Like you should go, but it's where a bunch of people died that you don't know, but it's all horrible. It's weird … look, I'm like this with cemeteries, you know this. It's strange enough having Rory go for interviews in the World Trade Center."

"Yeah, no kidding." Lorelai exited out of the maps and pulled up a second app, which showed another map display, but this one geared toward public transit.

"What's that?" Luke asked as she inputed their location and destination. An array of options popped up on the screen, and she pushed it back across the table to him.

"Citymapper. Paris texted Rory about it and made sure we both had it on our phones. So, we can take an Uber or a Lyft and get there in 20 minutes, or 40 minutes on the subway."

He smirked. "Real Uber?"

She grinned at him. "Not Kirk Oober."

"Get a Lyft."

"Right." Lorelai picked up her phone to summon the Lyft car.

Luke gathered their trash, stacking it on top of the empty tray. "At least I won't have to go rescue the driver."

"You hope."

* * *

Roughly a half hour later, they were through the front door and security checks of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. A map in Luke's hand and a newly downloaded app on Lorelai's phone, they headed for the Egyptian wing to start with.

Of course, the first case they approached had interesting and extremely well-endowed figures.

"Wow," Lorelai said, impressed.

"Huh." Luke looked down at the card next to the case to read about the objects.

"It's very phallic." Lorelai brought up her camera app on her phone and snapped a quick photo. She sent it off in a text to Rory.

"There's a lot of those in here."

"A plethora of penises." Lorelai circled around the case and read the card next to a small figure opposite the first one. "Ouch, this one had his broken off."

Luke flinched. "I think I'm just going to go look at that tomb over there."

She laughed as he quickly scurried over to a display of colorful sarcophagus. She joined him, drawn in by the art on the coffins. Egyptians had far more of a sense of fun when it came to death, she decided. You didn't have to go looking at casket after casket of wood, stainless steel, brass, or copper. No, you could just get one tailor-made to your personality and with your face. There was something to be said for that.

Lorelai nudged Luke's ribs. "Hey, when I die, can you score me a sarcophagus?"

He went so still that for a moment she thought he hadn't heard her. "First of all, no. Second, I'm going first."

She gaped at him. "What? Who says you can go first?"

"I do."

Lorelai huffed a bit. "Just because you're older …"

"No. I just … I'm going first. Got it?"

Luke was staring at the sarcophagus, but Lorelai wasn't sure he was even seeing them. There was something in his eyes that made her heart twist, and abruptly she found herself flung back to the first time her father had been in the hospital. Her mother had confessed that she had told her father the same thing once.

Lorleai slipped her hand into Luke's and squeezed until he tore his gaze away from the display. "OK. You can go first," she said softly, then leaned into his arm. "So, we better make sure Rory does me a solid, huh?"

He took a shuddering breath before squeezing her hand back. "I'm sure Rory will get you one covered with glitter. Just make sure it doesn't get on mine."

"But where's the fun in that?"

Ninety minutes, two coffee stops, and a bathroom break later, they had made their way from one side of the first floor to the other and stood in a long, wide room that was mostly empty other than series of tall poles, a few pieces of art, and a giant wooden roof assembled from dozens of ceremonial tribal tiles from New Guinea.

"Whoa," Luke breathed.

"I figured you'd like that." Lorelai wasn't sure how ceremonial tribal tiles reminded her of him, but there you go. The moment she had seen the room on her app, she had steered him toward it.

"Just look at them!"

"Lots and lots of ceiling tiles and memorial poles."

Luke gestured to a nearby bench before dropping onto it. "I'm going to sit, because really, I need to look at this."

Lorelai sank next to him, groaning in relief. "I'm going to sit because my feet are killing me."

She watched as he studied the tiles with the same sort of attention he devoted to watching a baseball game. It was amusing and endearing.

"You think they have a book about those things?" Luke wondered.

They had teased him in the past about his reading habits, but one thing she had learned in nine years of actually living together was that he _did_ read. It just had to be something that interested him - like ceremonial tribal tiles from New Guinea.

"I'm sure they do." Not wanting to get up and read a card, Lorelai poked through the app until she found information about the tiles on her phone. "Kind of a letdown. All these were made when we were kids. They're not ancient."

"So? The knowledge of how to make these has been passed down through centuries." Luke gestured to the display. "This is true craftsmanship."

He was right there. Lorelai swiped through the app, absently reading data on random objects in the room. This part of the museum was quieter than other areas. She weighed her options, then decided to go with round two. "Did I really dictate your life?"

"You didn't dictate it." Luke made a fist and unclenched it, studying his fingernails before turning his head toward her. "Look, I didn't want you to … you're going to get pissed at me if I say it."

"I'm not going to get pissed," Lorelai insisted.

Luke gave her a look born from years upon years of being in tune with her moods. "Yes, you are."

She sat up straighter, ignoring her aching feet. "Try me."

He dragged in a breath, letting it whoosh out. "You set rules the nine years ago, and I was OK with that because it made sense then. I was just happy that we were back together. You went on about how you weren't going to let your parents bother me, and you'd stay out of the way with April, and I didn't want to push you. It also didn't help that Anna pitched that huge fit and threatened to have the custody agreement revoked if you contributed financially to April's education in any way. We just never revisited the rules, that's all, and maybe we should have."

"All I've ever wanted in this life was for you and me to be together. I never thought we'd get there, and we did. And we sure as hell screwed it up, but we managed to patch things back into something beautiful, like all those tiles up there. We're going to fix this too." He reached for her hands, gripping them in his. His eyes bore into hers, as if he was trying to convince her of the veracity of his words through sheer will alone. "I am not unhappy. I don't know what it'll take to convince you that I'm not dissatisfied with the life that we have. Everything I've ever wanted is sitting right here."

Luke's words echoed through the empty hall, reverberating back at her, filling the empty spaces in her heart that she hadn't realized were there. They were made up of those doubts that she ignored over the years that she wasn't what he truly wanted, that he was only with her because it was expected of him after so long.

"But we never had kids." OK, that was such a weak protest.

He shook his head. "We have three between us if you count Jess. More if you consider how many kids we're godparents to. Look, I don't want to have sex with some other woman …"

Lorelai laughed, and it felt good. "You and I really have to clarify what this surrogacy stuff is about …"

"I know," Luke snapped, letting her hands go to remove his cap and push his hand through his hair in frustration. "I can use Google too, Lorelai. But it feels like it, even if I'm not touching her. It just feels like we're using her, and I don't like that. If you really want a kid, there's a ton of them out there whose parents don't want them. So, we can start there."

"I … don't really want another kid." The confession felt like she was ripping it from somewhere deep in her soul, along all the other failures that her mother had oh-so-kindly reminded her of during the past few months. "I just thought I was denying you the chance to have a fresh kid. I didn't want to take that experience away from you because I was selfish and wanted you all to myself."

Luke gave a short bark of a laugh. "Oh yes, you're denying me getting up in the middle of the night with a screaming, colicky baby at age 50. Do you hate me that much?"

She laughed in return and felt even lighter. "No."

"Yeah, I wanted a kid with you," he admitted, "back when I was trying to get the Twickham House. But then April came into our lives and everything happened, and it made me realize that my relationship with you was more important than having a kid. I know I missed the first 12 years of April's life, but I got to change diapers with Doula and walked the twins at 2 a.m. because Lane and Zach were at their wits' end, and Sookie's youngest took her first steps in the diner. I got to see all those milestones. Those were our kids, Lorelai, in addition to Rory, April, and Jess."

Lorelai suddenly needed him like she needed her next hit of coffee. "Do you think the strange bird poles would be offended if I kissed you right now?"

"I'm sure they wouldn't mind." Luke wrapped his arms around her as she leaned into him, his hand in a loose fist resting against her back as she kissed him. He relaxed the fist, pressing her closer into him as he took the kiss deeper. She kept her hands firmly in her lap, knowing that if she touched him, they would be thrown out of the museum for public indecency.

He eased away, smiling softly in that rare way of his that was just for her. It never failed to make her feel like she consumed a half-dozen cupcakes, then plummeted down a steep roller coaster. Love bubbled up in her in a way she only felt for very few people and caused words to fail her. Instead, she reached out to toy with a button on his plaid.

"C'mon. Let's go get your book on ceremonial ceiling tiles," she said when she could speak again.


	2. Chapter 2

It was nearly dark by the time they left the museum. Instead of joining the throngs of people trying to hail taxis and clustered around food trucks, they veered down a path into Central Park.

"We can call a Lyft," Luke suggested.

"I just feel like walking for a bit." Lorelai knew she was going to pay for all the walking tomorrow, but she really didn't mind. "Besides, it's getting dark later, so people are still in Central Park."

"I'm not carrying you when you get tired," he warned her, and she stuck her tongue out at him.

They stopped at a food truck for water bottles and made their way south.

Lorelai was sorting through the remaining questions in her mind when Luke spoke up. "Has it been working? The therapy?"

Huh. She hadn't been expecting that. Pleased that he was getting stuff off his chest as well, she squelched her immediate urge to make a pithy quip about therapy and give him a real answer. "I guess? I don't know, it feels weird talking about all that stuff. Mom's right, some of it's ridiculous, but I think it needed to be aired out. I keep thinking that one day, there'll be this magical breakthrough and a light will shine down from the heavens, and everything will be fine and I'll have all the answers. But maybe that's what therapy is – learning how to cope until you find the answers on your own."

She toyed with the cap on her water bottle. "How did you guess I was going to therapy on my own anyhow?"

He shrugged. "Because, I know you. You're not going shopping, because there'd be a lot of new crap in the house with no explanation. If you weren't going, you would have said something. But you didn't tell me or Rory, so I assumed you were still going on your own. And I saw the bill laying next to your purse a couple days ago."

"See?" She lightly punched his arm. "Making you watch _Sherlock_ has paid off."

He took a long pull from his own water bottle, taking his time putting the cap back on. "I want you to know that I'll do whatever it takes to fix what's wrong. I'll go to your therapist with you if you want."

"What?" Lorelai jerked her head around to gape at him, nearly plowing into a trio of bicyclists barreling down the path toward them. Luke pulled her out of the way and off the sidewalk, moving onto a patch of grass between two benches.

They watched as the cyclists continued on their way, nearly taking out a couple with a baby stroller and a small, barking dog. He absently rubbed her arm. "Look, I know I'm I know I am not the easiest guy in the world to build a life with and to share a house with. But there is no one who will be more here for you than me. I have never thought about leaving you, except …"

"When I forced you into it," Lorelai acknowledged.

"But even then … I never wanted to." He rolled his water bottle between his hands. "It hurt. A lot." The words sound like they came from some place deep inside him, where he kept all of his vulnerabilities hidden.

"I still hate myself for what I did to you." They had dealt with it. The only reason they were standing there at all was because in the weeks after Rory left for the Obama campaign, they had dealt with the spectacular explosion that was the end of their engagement. Even so, every so often, remembering that time in her life felt like a rotting tooth. "Which means that clearly therapy is the right place for me."

"It wasn't all your fault. We did it to each other." Luke wrapped his arm around Lorelai like he had months earlier, when she finally agreed to go to therapy with her mother. He steered her back onto the path. "We've been through so much, and we made it through all of it. We can't let something like this happen again. So, I'll go to therapy with you."

They walked together, his arm around hers, but it didn't feel quite so overwhelming as it had when she agreed to go to therapy with her mother. It wasn't going to be pleasant, that was the cold, hard truth. But they were stubborn enough, in love enough, to make it work.

* * *

Lorelai stood atop a wide, flat rock, squinting at her phone. She looked up at the skyline, then back at her phone, then up at the buildings again. Satisfied, she turned to Luke, who stood still on the path, and waved her phone at him. "I think this is it."

"Where are we?" He climbed up to her side, ignoring the few tourists that remained in the darkness.

She pressed a hand to her chest in mock horror. "I am _shocked_ you don't recognize the place! I'm having your geek card rescinded."

There was just enough light that she caught his familiar expression of exasperation. "It's close to 10 p.m., Lorelai. All I know is that we're still in Central Park."

"It was on one of those episodes of _Doctor Who_ you had me watch. The one where the married couple got taken back in time, but they had a picnic here first. Rory and I looked up a website where they have all the famous TV and movie locations in Central Park marked, and I knew we'd pass this one on the way back." She grabbed hold of his arm and pressed into his side. "It's a nice view."

"It is," he agreed, and she pulled out her phone to take a photo. "Hey, can you send a copy of that to April?"

"You mean like all the other ones I've been sending tonight?" She turned the phone so he could see April's name across the top as a recipient. "She's been getting them and she replied, and I quote, 'Dad, join the 21st century and get a smartphone.'"

"I have a perfectly good phone!"

"Yes, and chisels and stone tablets were perfectly good in the time of the Flintstones." Lorelai nudged him. "The Apple Store's nearby and is open 24-7. We can go shopping."

"No," Luke told her firmly.

"You're no fun." she pouted.

"I have no desire to join the army of soulless Apple bots."

"Hey, I have an iPhone."

"See?"

She promptly stuck her tongue out at him.

Luke once told her that he enjoyed spending time with her so much that he didn't mind where she dragged them as long as he got to be with her. She acknowledged that it was the same with him. With Rory off to college and later her career, he had become her partner in crime. But in the past few months, they had been so busy that other than for the occasional town event and movie night, they hadn't been able to spend much time together that didn't involve her mother, Rory, April, or the whole surrogacy thing. She needed to rectify that immediately. A real vacation sounded wonderful. She turned to him to suggest that very thing.

"Do you want to try the whole getting married thing again eventually?"

OK, that so was not what she had planned to say.

But at that moment, from her head down to the pink-tipped toes that wiggled in her new shoes, Lorelai knew it was the absolute right thing to say. Everything they had said and done had led to this moment, and for the first time in a very long time, she could see her path in life with a sharp clarity. No matter what happened with Rory or her mother or the Dragonfly or Michel and Sookie, _this_ was the thing she wanted most.

The last time she had popped the marriage question, Luke had reacted with shock. This time, he looked down at her, those blue eyes she loved so much steady and sure, his answer immediate. "Yes."

Speech failed her. Words leaked from her brain and flowed down the rocks to pool somewhere on the sidewalk. "Whoa, that was fast. I mean, really fast. You didn't even have to think about it."

He ran his hands up and down her arms. "I don't have to think. I just _know_."

She did too. But … "I'm afraid of screwing it all up again."

"You think I'm not?" He squeezed her upper arms. "Look, we've been together for nine years now. Eleven, really. We've known each other for two decades. It's you. It was always supposed to be you."

Her smile was tremulous. "Yeah. It was always supposed to be you, too."

"Besides, isn't that what the therapy's supposed to be for? Isn't that why we're right here, right now? We're not going to screw it up, because you won't let it, and I won't let it." Luke looked down at the rocks, as if he was contemplating something, then back at her. He slid his hands down to take hers, pressing them to his chest. "Will you marry me?" He gave her a crooked, nearly boyish grin. "I figured I'd try proposing for once, see what it was like."

Lorelai laughed, and the joyous sound echoed across the park. She threw her arms around his neck, and he lifted her off her feet, spinning her around as he laughed with her. "You did once before," she reminded him, "to get me to shut up. I never asked you what you would have done if I'd said yes back then."

"Been scared shitless, then consider myself the luckiest guy on the planet." Luke pressed his forehead to hers. "And now?"

"Absolutely, always, yes."

Lorelai barely got the words out before his lips were on hers, his kiss hot and hungry. Their previous engagement had been partially an act of desperation on her part, trying to hold onto what remaining family she had. But this one felt right in every way. They still had a ways to go, and therapy wasn't going to be a barrel of laughs. But this time, they were going to make it. It was simply a fact.

He picked up her left hand and ran his thumb over her bare ring finger. "Your ring's still in the desk at home. We can get you another."

"Don't you dare," Lorelai admonished him, and pulled him to her for another kiss. This one left her mere seconds from dragging him down onto the rocks with her. "How fast can we get back to the hotel?"

"You're the one with the Lyft app." Luke trailed his lips down the side of her neck as she fumbled to get her phone out. They hastily broke apart as she programmed in their location with shaky fingers. Grabbing hands, they raced to the nearest park exit.

* * *

Her back was against the door almost the moment they got it closed, and the bag from the Met containing the book on ceremonial ceiling tiles thudded to the ground at their feet. Not for the first time in their relationship, she muttered under her breath about the amount of clothes he wore as she yanked up layers of shirt to reach skin. The passage of time had changed things for both of them, but he was still trim and strong and her fingers mapped out every place she knew drove him crazy.

His hands were large, warm, and very efficient in getting her down to the plain bra she had lamented over hours earlier. As each piece of clothing was removed, their mouths sought each other out again and again, unwilling to be apart for the seconds it took to cast aside bra, shirts, and unbutton both their jeans. The connection between them sang, as strong as the first time they had done this on an August evening so long ago.

He dropped to his knees as she toed off her new shoes, kicking them further inside the room. She nearly cried from relief as her aching feet hit the floor, and her overworked legs were at war with the adrenaline racing through her. He peeled the jeans down her legs, taking her panties with them, and she braced herself on his shoulder one foot at a time as he removed them.

"Are you OK?" He ran his hand up and down her tight calf muscles, lightly massaging them.

"Oh, god, that's nearly as good as sex," she moaned.

His eyes gleamed with a wicked light, and he leaned in, nuzzling her curls before finding her clit with his tongue. Her palms slammed against the door as her hips jerked forward. It was the only thing keeping her upright, one hand digging into the handle as the other fisted and lightly rapped against the door. He abandoned her leg to run those talented fingers through her folds, then thrust deep into her.

Shit, shit, _shit._ She wasn't sure if she was thinking the words or saying them out loud as her hands let go of the door and found his hair. She opened her eyes briefly, not even realizing she had closed them in the first place. The bed lay not a reasonable distance across the room, but it might have been an oasis in the Sahara for all she cared. He crooked his fingers, and suddenly, she was perilously close to the edge. She wanted him with her, she wanted him inside her, but she was about to lose whatever control she was hanging onto.

Just as she felt herself tightening, tightening, pleasure about to sweep her away, he suddenly pulled away and kissed her inner thigh.

This was grounds for murder, right? Leaving your once and future fiancée on the edge of a screaming orgasm? There wasn't a court of law in the country that would convict her, especially if the judge was a woman.

Ridiculously pleased with himself, Luke rose to his feet and took her in her arms, spinning her toward the bed. No, it was more like waltzing. She was naked, he only wore jeans, and he was waltzing her to the bed, looking down at her as he had that very first dance they shared together. The first time he actually let Lorelai see the depths of the emotion he felt toward her.

The back of her legs hit the bed, and she dropped onto the mattress as he shucked the rest of his clothes and joined her. Well intent on payback, she pounced, rolling on top of him until they were in the same position they had been in eight hours earlier. He sat up, back against the headboard, and she straddled his thighs.

What a difference those hours made.

He gripped her hips as she teased him, dipping her fingers into her own warmth before trailing them down the length of his cock before gripping it hard. She watched the pleasure play over his face as she stroked him, determined to pay him back for his little stunt. Her own need raked her like little claws, and it wasn't long before the fingers of her other hand were between her own thighs, stroking herself at the same time she stroked him. It was a feat of coordination she would had appreciated had her brain been able to function at all.

She knew the moment he had reached the end of his own control, as he swelled larger in her hand and began to shake. Before she could react, he pulled her over him and guided himself into her. The feel of him was exquisite, but she was too far gone to fully appreciate it. She rocked her hips frantically and his fingers dug into her waist once more. They were face to face, eyes locked on each other until his lips found hers. He kissed her deeply until suddenly he broke away with a hiss, gasping and shaking against her.

But she was already far gone, her peak hitting just a couple seconds ahead of his. Her head tilted back, and she didn't know whether to cry or scream. Maybe a little bit of both as she rode out the orgasm until her muscles simply refused to cooperate. She collapsed against him, breathing hard as their bodies still shook with the aftershocks of what they had shared.

"So," Luke managed after gulping in several breaths, "are we back to being gold medalists?"

"Oh yeah." Lorelai grinned at him as he ran his hand through her hair. "The competition isn't even close."

"Thank god for that."

Lorelai rolled off him, collapsing onto her back as lethargy stole over her. Enjoy it now, she told herself, because every single muscle in her body was going to take revenge on her in the morning.

* * *

She wasn't sure they had even been asleep an hour before she heard the frantic knocking at the door. Luke's arm tightened around her waist briefly before he pushed himself up. She pulled the pillow over her head.

"Mom?" Rory's voice came through the door. "Mom, I need you."

"She's 31, can't she sleep through the night yet?" Lorelai moaned, then rolled out of bed. Her legs were shaky as she dug into the closet for a bathrobe and pulled it on. She belted it, then unlatched the door to reveal her disheveled daughter.

"The hell? Rory?" she managed as Rory rushed into the room. She nearly called out a warning, but Rory whipped around so fast that she didn't even bother looking toward the bed.

"I slept with a Wookiee!" Rory cried.

Lorelai wasn't even sure how to process that one. "A _what_?"

Rory paced the short foyer that matched the one in the room she had shared with her mother until a few hours earlier. "Wookiee! Wookiee! I slept with a Wookiee! Don't make me keep saying it!"

Lorelai leaned against the door that had been put to quite a different use not so long ago. Before midnight, it was a hotbed of sexual activity. Now it kept her momentarily crazed daughter from rushing back into the hall and inflicting her insanity on the rest of New York. "Right. Slept with a Wookiee. Is that one e or two?"

"Mom," Rory moaned.

"It's two."

Rory whipped around at the sound of Luke's voice. He sat on the edge of the unmade bed, redressed in his jeans and T-shirt. Lorelai admired his ability to quickly dress under the covers since they hadn't bothered with more than stacking their clothes on a chair after a second round of celebrating their engagement.

Rory's eyes were wide with shock and mortification. "Ohmigod, Luke. What's Luke doing here?"

Lorelai rolled her eyes. "Um, did you not read the twenty thousand messages I texted you?"

Rory whipped her attention back to her. "No. Well, I saw that you switched rooms and that my lucky outfit magically appeared in the closet, but I was panicking because I _slept with a Wookiee_."

Lorelai held up two fingers. "With two _e_ s. Got it. So, what happened, kid?"

"You left me with the collectables line, and I kind of bonded with this one group …" Too lost in her own misery, Rory recanted her tale as she paced the full length of the room. As she babbled, Lorelai grabbed her own clothes and stepped into the bathroom to change. "I can't believe this. And now, I'm blurting out that I had a one-night stand to my mom and the guy who's practically my stepdad."

"Spoiler alert: that Facebook status is going to change," Lorelai said from the bathroom.

"What?" Rory nearly tripped over the corner of the bed in her haste to verify the information. "Are you two getting married? Finally?" Because he was closest, she threw her arms around Luke, who returned it with a one-armed hug and proud smile. "I'm so happy for you two!"

"If you had answered the six million phone calls I'd left, you would have known at the same time we told April." Lorelai walked out of the bathroom, scooping her hair back into a ponytail. "We tried calling you on the way back from Central Park."

"You got engaged in Central Park! That's so romantic!" Rory threw her arms around her mother, squeezing her tight before pulling away abruptly. "And I had a one-night stand! I'm 31, and I'm only now having a one-night stand!"

"Huh. Wow." Winning reaction from the Mom's Handbook, Lorelai, she admonished herself.

"Why?" Rory narrowed her eyes. "Why wow?"

Lorelai shrugged. "I thought that's what college was for."

Rory pointed at her. "Exactly! How many have you had?"

"Easy. None."

Rory gaped at her. "How?"

Lorelai gestured back at the reason that one-night stands never entered the picture. "Well, we can start with the whole being a mom at 16. I had you, and rules, and work, and rules. I had a couple three-night stands, if that helps."

"Oh, great." Rory buried her head in her hands before looking up at Luke. "And I'm sure _you've_ never had a one-night stand either."

The color drained from his face so fast that it made his stubble stand out in the low light. He edged toward the door. "You know, I think I'm going to find some liquid poison to inject into both your veins. I think we passed one of those pizza bodega joints earlier. I'll get us a pizza and you two some coffee."

Rory's jaw fell as Luke avoided making eye contact with her. "You have! You've had a one-night stand!"

Amused and _definitely_ intrigued, Lorelai folded her arms over her chest and leaned against the wall. "Oh, now I'm really interested."

Luke gestured to both girls as he backed toward the door, ducking down at the last second for his boots. "You two should talk."

Oh no. He wasn't getting off that easy. Lorelai snatched one boot before he could grab it and held it up by the laces, her hostage. "Spill. _You_ had a one-night stand?"

"Long before I met either of you, and that's all I'm going to say about it." Luke grabbed the shoe from her hand, because damn it, he was taller than her, and was out the door before Lorelai could think of any further evasive maneuvers. Though the mental image of him walking barefoot to the elevator was amusing. She would have to torture him with information about all the germs in the place.

"Wow. I thought you guys told each other everything," Rory said from behind Lorelai.

Lorelai shook her head. "I asked about his hobbies, his politics, his religious beliefs, but never about the one-night stands. See? If Luke can have a one-night stand and still stand tall and righteous in the world, so can you."

"I guess. I don't know." Rory hugged herself, wandering back to the bed and throwing herself across the end. "Mom, my love life is a disaster." She stared at the ceiling. "You and Luke were just having sex in this bed, weren't you?"

"What answer will mentally scar you the least?"

"That's what I thought." Rory sprang up. "Now I need three showers."

* * *

Four cups of coffee and most of a pizza later, a worn-out Rory was steered back to her room. They had talked and talked and talked, and Lorelai wound up telling Rory about the venture to the Met and the agreement to go to therapy together. In return, Rory finally revealed the truth about her own love life that she had kept hidden for so long.

As Lorelai latched the door behind her, Luke spoke up from the bed. "She OK?"

She turned back to him. He had dozed off after coming back with pizza and coffee, the long day he had finally catching up with him. "She will be. She's just lost. We've all been lost really since Dad ..."

"It gets better." He got up to remove his jeans as Lorelai began to change once more. This time, she dug out her pajamas out of her suitcase.

"Says the guy who went into uber mourning on the anniversary of his dad's death," she pointed out as she exchanged shirt for pajama top.

"You realize though after that first year we dated, I haven't." Luke slid back under the covers in his T-shirt and boxers.

Lorelai thought back over the years. She had been there for every anniversary other than the terrible, horrible, no-good, very-bad year, and he was right. He had been depressed that second year, but it had more to do with April than his father. "No, you haven't."

"You helped. A lot. I hadn't really told anyone before you. You helped and April and, god help me, Liz and TJ. It takes time, but it does get better." Luke held up the covers for her as she slipped in beside him. She groaned as she relaxed into the mattress. Bed was nice. So very nice. She closed her eyes as he turned off the lamp.

"So, tell me about the one-night stand," she said into the dark.

Luke wrapped an arm around her, and she could feel the embarrassment radiating off him. "Aw, geez."

"I'm not jealous." Lorelai craned her head to look at him. "I'm serious! You said it was before we met, right?"

"Yeah. Not long after my dad died." Luke absently traced circles on her arm. "I felt a lot like Rory, really. Liz had taken off years earlier, so I'd been Dad's only caretaker for years, and then I was left with a failing hardware store and having to sell my childhood home. I had no sense of purpose really. I went out to a bar one night, and it just happened. It wasn't very good." He heaved a sigh. "And I learned that I really am not cut out for those."

Lorelai nudged him. "Committed guy, huh?"

He snuggled into her, burying his nose in her hair. "I even got engaged tonight."

She closed her eyes again, toes curling. "Ooooh, I envy the lucky woman."

"Rory'll be fine. She's a good kid."

They lapsed into silence, and it would be easy to fall asleep after that. But there had been one thing that Rory told her that made her worry more than having a one-night stand with a costumed Star Wars character. "She's sleeping with Logan Huntzberger," she blurted.

Luke jerked awake behind her. "Wow."

"You're telling me." Lorelai turned so she could look at him. "She lied to me about it. She lied to me, you lied to me, I lied to you … we're a houseful of lies."

He tucked a lock of hair behind her ears. "And we're dealing with it. Rory will deal with it too."

"That's what I told her. We didn't want to make the same mistakes again. Gave her a lot to think about." Lorelai sat up, not feeling tired at all. She eyed the pizza box across the room. "Want to split the final piece of pizza?"

"We should sleep." As an emphasis, Luke tugged her back down until she lay in his arms again.

"It's nearly 5 in the morning," Lorelai pointed out. It was practically his wake-up time.

"We should really sleep." He closed his eyes.

"But pizza."

"It can be breakfast."

Lorelai twisted in his arms once more. "You're advocating leftover pizza for breakfast? Living with me has made you a changed man."

He kissed her forehead. "Sleep."

The miracle of it all was that she actually did. Not that it was that much. A series of knocks on the door roused Lorelai from slumber, and to her dismay, she saw it was nearly 10. Great, probably housekeeping, and she forgot to hang the 'do not disturb' sign on the door. She stumbled out of bed, legs stiff and reminding her of the abuse she had inflicted on them. Her Fitbit count was probably through the roof.

"Good thing I went ahead and kept the room an extra day," she muttered, more to herself than anything. She pulled open the door to see Rory in her red outfit, her neat hair pulled back in a ponytail, which she had curled. "Hey, kid! Looking good!"

"You two up yet? I couldn't sleep. I've had six cups of coffee and filled this notebook with research. I have so many ideas." Rory bounced on her toes excitedly. "So, I'm going for it. I'm going back to GQ. I'm wearing my lucky outfit, even though _some_ people says it washes me out. I know what I'm doing. I figured that if you two can get engaged and go to therapy, I can get a good job. Call you later. Bye!" She pressed a kiss to Lorelai's cheek and dashed toward the elevator.

"Rory?" Luke asked as Lorelai closed the door, making sure the 'do not disturb' sign was in place.

"Think she's going to be fine." She smiled at him. Luke was staring at her sleepily, looking far more appetizing than the leftover pizza he promised her she could eat for breakfast. "So, we got the room for one more day. Want to take advantage of it?"

"More sightseeing?"

"Yup." She sauntered back to the bed, already making plans to strip him naked and enjoy him. "I'm seeing a mighty fine sight right here."


End file.
